Piccadilly Circus
The junction so busy its name became British slang for a crowded place: "it's like Piccadilly Circus."
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Electric ads have blazed here since 1908, and the West End's big arteries all empty into one open space. Stand at the center for the crossroads energy plus a Victorian memorial fountain in a single glance.
What to look for
- The wall of giant screens sits on just ONE building, the northwestern corner; every other facade stays sign-free.
- The winged archer everyone calls Eros is actually Anteros — 'The Angel of Christian Charity' — a memorial to Lord Shaftesbury, put up 1892-93.
- The fountain isn't in the middle: it was shifted to the southwestern corner in the late 1980s.
Six roads feed in — Regent Street, Piccadilly, Shaftesbury Avenue, Haymarket, Coventry and Glasshouse — so cross on the lights; the Tube (Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines) exits right into it.
Piccadilly Circus is one of 40 sights worth the detour in London, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the London pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in London
- British MuseumThe room where a dead language got its voice back — and you walk in for free.
- Buckingham PalaceThe balcony where a whole country turns up to watch a family wave — with 775 rooms behind it.
- Westminster AbbeyNearly every English monarch since 1066 has been crowned on the same worn patch of floor.
- Big BenThe clang in a thousand establishing shots comes from a cracked bell that's rung slightly off-key since 1859.
- Tower of LondonWilliam the Conqueror's keep turned royal prison, where two queens lost their heads and the Crown Jewels still sit under guard.
- Tower BridgeA Victorian drawbridge dressed as a Gothic castle, its roadway still splitting open for passing ships.